Final Fantasy XIV relaunch secures 1.5 million subscribers

Square Enix has announced that Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn has had more than a million and a half registered players since its relaunch two months ago, which puts the title at about 1/5th of World of Warcraft’s most recent subscriber count.

The first version of Final Fantasy XIV launched back in 2011, but was quickly shut down after it was unable to retain subscriber numbers due to a variety of issues which ranged from bugs and poor server stability to more damning design issues. The relaunch a few months ago went through similar server issues for the first few weeks, but the game is apparently relatively stable now across both the PS3 and PC.

It remains to be seen if Square can retain these subscriber numbers. The game’s producer Naoki Yoshida says while the game has surpassed the normal second month 65% drop off for subscription based games, they expect more to leave once they make it through the game’s main scenario for the first time. His hope is that the playerbase will stay big enough to maintain “constant updates”, which in turn will help bring back players who have let their subscriptions lapse.

A beta for the game’s upcoming PS4 version is set to launch early next year.